The present invention relates generally to systems for associating information objects together, and more specifically to a system and method for providing a “metalayer” of links and/or information for use in connection with the World Wide Web.
The growth of the World Wide Web (“Web”), generally thought of as those resources and users on the Internet using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), has been tremendous. Content information is organized on the Web in what are referred to as “Web pages.” As it is generally known, a typical Web page contains a multiplicity of words, phrases, graphics, and other objects (henceforth called just “objects”), some of which are associated with what are known as “hyperlinks” or “links” to other Web pages. One of the powerful aspects of the Web is that users can go from one Web page to another, following links as they choose, in a non-linear and unpredictable way. In existing systems, this is made possible by the designers of Web pages selectively assigning links to words, phrases, graphics, and other objects on their Web pages, for example through use of “href” HTML tags within HTML files describing those Web pages.
The ability to follow links that are embedded within the HTML code describing a Web page defines the Web experience provided by existing systems. However, such an approach may also hinder the user, in the sense that only certain objects within a given Web page, predefined by the designer of the Web page, are in fact linked to other Web pages. It would be desirable to shift some or all the responsibility for defining links for a given Web page from the Web page designer, to a user who has selected that Web page, and who may wish to choose from a richer and more current selection of related links.
For example, consider the case of a Web user who is looking for information relating to a certain topic. Such a user may be said to be “surfing” the Web. If the user has accessed a sports-related Web page, and is reading about a soccer player from Kosovo, the fact that the player is from Kosovo might trigger an association in the user's mind with the ongoing political unrest in that province of Yugoslavia. However, the sports-related Web page probably does not have a pre-defined link associated with the word Kosovo, nor to any Web page that focuses on the political situation there. In existing systems, if the user wants to explore this new train of thought, he might have to leave the sports-related Web page, go to a search engine, type in “Kosovo” as a search query, and thereby obtain a list of links related to Kosovo. Such a detour to a search engine could be time-consuming and inconvenient, and the user might therefore instead opt to postpone and potentially forget about his sudden interest in Kosovo.
Existing application programs which seek to enhance a Web user's surfing experience include ThirdVoice™ of ThirdVoice Inc., and products available from Hypernix Technologies, Ltd. ThirdVoice enables a user to post commentary relating to specific Web pages, without modifying the Web pages themselves, and without requiring permission of the Web sites at which the Web pages are located. ThirdVoice causes a caret to be displayed on top of existing content within a Web page, in order to indicate the presence of a message relating to that Web page. Users of ThirdVoice's software can see and read each other's posted messages. Hypernix enables users of its software to chat with other users visiting the same Web site, without the Web site's involvement. While Hypernix and ThirdVoice system provide groups of users with the ability to enter and retrieve comments regarding specific content within a Web page, they fail to change the underlying model of Web browsing, which is based on following sets of predetermined links from Web page to Web page.
For the above reasons, it would be desirable to have a system for using the Web which liberates Web users from the present Web surfing scenario, in which a Web surfer looking to go from one Web page to another is forced to choose a link from among the subset of objects on the page that have predefined links.